What a great episode. Lindsay is my idol and always asks great questions, but never as tough as in this episode, because you can tell she disagrees w Kaminer… which is why I was happy to see her get totally demolished by Kaminer, who happens to be absolutely right about this issue. Sorry Lindsay, the Regressive Left is wrong about this.

Lindsay made the point that emotionally sensitive people deserve an education too. It’s a good point, but it’s out of the bounds of the nature of learning if it isn’t within reason. You simply MUST engage difficult issues that will occasionally offend you. If you can’t, then you simply can’t. It’s like expecting a school to make accommodations for someone who has been injured or has a fragile disability to play on the college football team. They could get seriously injured or even killed. Should we make football so that it’s gentle enough for people affected by hemophilia? NO. And yes, Kaminer is right that the goal posts do get moved as people become more sensitive. The less I use my hammer or play my guitar, the more quickly my callus softens again. She’s also right that issues of race and gender have contributed to the sensitivity towards IDEAS, which are not the same thing. The problem is that issues of race and gender are often presented in the framework of philosophies and/or policies that should be debatable (e.g. feminism, affirmative action), but they also have a non-debatable component when it comes to rights (i.e. the immutable characteristic: the demographic), so we have come to expect other philosophies to get that same ‘hands off’ treatment that we apply to immutable characteristics. Religion should be allowed to be criticized, because it is not immutable. As the great DJ Grothe used to always say, ideas do not deserve respect: people do.

Signature

“Mary is the Yoko Ono of the Holy Family… and Satan is the Ringo. It wouldn’t be the same without him- sometimes they even let him sing”